The Wait
by we are eternal
Summary: Live together, die alone. Robert/Rosalind
1. Chapter 1

Rosalind dreamed of a man who looked just like her. His name was Robert and he touched her long fingers that knew only of the piano's song. He took her into his arms and danced her into the light.

She stayed up late at night until he was with her. Her bones grew sharper, etching into her flesh. Her voice was an echo and her eyes hollow, only seeing what they wanted.

He was her, a different version of her. And she was him.

"I dreamt of you." Robert whispered. They were in bed. Her nylons were rolled down to her knees. "I dreamt horrible things about you."

Her hair was frizzed and escaping its bun. Strands of it fell to her shoulders and tickled her skin. She touched the back of his arm, trailing faded freckles. Her skin was consumed by him, her lips made him hers, but her pale eyes looked through him, into a quiet world where only they existed.

He didn't say what he was thinking. That this, that _they _were a bad idea. He didn't have to. It was in his kiss. He grabbed her by the hair and bit her bottom lip. He was desperate to possess her, but he knew he couldn't hold onto her.

"You don't have to worry."

"Don't I?"

_Yes. _

"No." She kissed his brow.

They were two sides of the same coin.


	2. Chapter 2

"What were they like?"

_Mom and dad._ She didn't want to call them that. They didn't deserve it. She didn't want a fantasy, but that's what he gave her. To spite her or make her feel better she wasn't sure. It had done neither. She knew he was lying.

"_I asked you to help me and you looked at me with disgust and walked away. I was a child."_

_Rosalind didn't look at her. She didn't take a seat. She wasn't sure why she had come, to say goodbye? To haunt her. She put her here to die. She left her mother alone to die in a horrible place, thinking it would make the past okay, and in some ways it had. It was the same cruelty that had been bashed over her head as a child, that coldness tightened around her heart and made it hard to breathe. It had been beaten into her. Inherited. _

_It was dark place. There were no windows. It smelled sweet like ethanol. There was a vase with cracks running through it. A few lonely flowers stuck up out of it, jarringly. Robert had been here. It didn't belong here and either did he. _

"_I was your daughter and you regretted me, but father loved me and you couldn't stand that, could you? You never say anything," Rosalind wasn't sure how many times she had been doing this, asking the same questions. She wasn't expecting a different result. She didn't have that kind of insanity. She wanted a reprieve from guilt. "Thank you for teaching me never to ask for help." _

"You don't have to tell me what it's like to be unloved."

"No?" He asked gently. "But I do have to tell you what it means to love."

"It doesn't mean anything, dear brother. It's something you do."


	3. Chapter 3

Her eyes were scratchy and her skin was pale, well paler than usual. It made her hair seem a brighter shade of red like a fire on a bright, cloudless day. The smoke burned his eyes and blackened his lungs. Her cheeks were puffy and her words were dry.

She had found him on the floor. He missed the bed by a few feet. He was clutching the bottle and muttering incoherently, and drooling. She shouldn't have taken the bottle. She shouldn't have done a lot of things. Her head still ached. He was a better drinker than she if nothing else.

She wore a long blazer over her underdress. "Are you just going to stand there?"

"You tell me." Booker smirked.

"My brother is much better at predicting your actions." Predicting wasn't the right word. Their fates were tied together, predestined no matter how much they struggled. Understanding was more like it.

"And where is he, your brother?"

"Not here."

"I can see that."

"I'm glad you can see something."

They had been stuck in this pocket of time for only _God_ knew how long, trying to get it "right", and they still found things to argue about. She supposed that's what she liked about him.

"You're different."

"Are we?" It was barely a question. She knew they were, at least for now. "He's afraid of becoming me."

"He's fond of you, you know. Admires you,"

"What for?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," She laughed, "For trying to change."

"What about you? You fond of me?"

"There's nothing to say." She told him a long time ago. It wasn't that she couldn't remember. She couldn't forget. _"You fall in love with an idea. It doesn't matter if it's the same idea, over and over. It's like that with people too." _

She reached into the pocket of her blazer and took out a cigarette.

"Want one?"

"I quit."

"You quit?"

"Yeah, I quit."


	4. Chapter 4

"I thought you quit."

"Well you know what they say, some things never change."

Booker leaned closer to Robert, holding out a cigarette.

"I don't smoke."

"Since when?"

"Since never. We may be twins, but that doesn't mean we don't have our share of disagreements. I tell her it'll kill her. She tells me she's already dead. Well it would have, eventually…"

But they didn't get an eventually.

They had the morning and Paris. The birds were twittering and a butterfly had taken an interest in him. It was obnoxious really. Robert wanted to go inside, read his books, but he didn't want the cigarette smoke lingering in the house.

**R**osalind got an ache in her heart when he wasn't around. She feared that if they weren't together one of them would disappear. She became more like him when he was gone. She never let her hair down. She pulled her corset tighter. She left her face blank. She drank tea with a pissed-off expression. She thought it made her look posh. He just kept to himself and waited for her to return.

She was in her castle on a cloud, well a dark tower that reeked of bad memories to be exact. They were gentle with her, never leaving a bruise or needle mark. All her scars were on the inside. When she woke up from a nightmare, her chest heaving and her fingernails digging into the palms of her hands, it was a memory-not a dream. One she wouldn't remember until she was an old woman looking out on a world she barely recognized, gray skies, blood on the cobblestone, and death in the air. The pain made Rosalind nostalgic. It was her reality. It had been her past and would be her future. She had made it normality. She usually watched Elizabeth through the glass, but today she saw her in the flesh. She enjoyed the girl's company.

"Have you read all of these?" She asked, tilting her head at the stacks of books.

"Some more than once."

"Robert loves to read."

"That's your brother right? You talk about him a lot."

"That's how it is with family, they…get to you."

"I wouldn't know."

"A lot of physics, is that what you want to be?"

"I don't suppose I'll be anything, up in here."

Elizabeth had stopped asking Rosalind to get her out, but that didn't mean she had stopped regretting her for it.

**T**he sky had darkened and a fog was coming in. She had stopped watching the sunset a long time ago. She knew time was all they had. She knew they didn't have enough. Bells rang in the distance; they made her feel hollow, kicking up dust in places she liked to forget about.

The first time she lost him was in a city of lights. It was loud and dirty. Voices spoke in a foreign tongue. They hissed in her ear and shot daggers at her eyes. An orange and red glow bathed her, the colour of fire, and the sound of honking horns filled the street.

She told him not to come here, with these people, but he never listened to her. They didn't belong here. They didn't belong anywhere. The wind had a hold of a skirt. It danced in the howling night and caressed her soft milky skin. There was a cold sweat starting at the back of her neck, treading down her spine.

There he was with his head split open. She cradled him in her arms. Tears rolled down her cheeks. She knew she would see him again, but that didn't slow her tears.

Her heart longed for him. Her heart cried for him.


End file.
